One Bite at a Time

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Movies Since Last Time

This is the summer of Western research for me, so my movie choices
lean heavily in that direction. It’s also got me watching a lot more movies
than usual, so I’ll add to this list next time.

3:10 to Yuma
(2007) Quite a bit different from Elmore Leonard’s original story but, like Get

Shorty, the director (James Mangold)
and the screenwriters (Halsted Welles, Derek Haas, and Michael Brandt) knew how
much to keep along with what and how much to change to stay true to the spirit
of the story. A first-rate cast is led by Russell Crowe and Christian Bale with
excellent supporting work by Peter Fonda, Gretchen Mol, a frightening Ben
Foster, and young Logan Lerman as Bale’s son. The easy Hollywood ending is
eschewed and The Beloved Spouse™ and I debated Crowe’s final motivations
afterward, but it was the kind of debate that reflected a feeling we were
discussing what it was that made an actual person do something, not dismissing
a character’s facile change to make a plot point. Not quite a transcendent
Western in the mold of Unforgiven or The Wild Bunch, but damned good.

Wonder Woman
(2017) As anyone who knows me on Facebook can attest, I don’t do comic book
movies. I’ve also been recently burned by the action genre with Fate of
the Furious.

Still, Wonder Woman
received such buzz on multiple levels I couldn’t refuse the pleas of The
Beloved Spouse™ to check it out. Yes, it’s a comic book movie, but the universe
building doesn’t clank too badly and the performances are all outstanding. Gal
Gadot nails Wonder Woman and Chris Pine is outstanding as Steve Trevor. (I’m
still trying to decide who some of his deliveries remind me of. It’s someone I
like, so it’s a compliment.) Particularly gratifying is the filmmakers’
willingness to make Trevor a valuable assistant, but only for things Wonder
Woman couldn’t do herself. (Negotiating her way to and through England, getting
to the front, and various bits of information she needed and could not
otherwise have gotten.) None of it was remotely like, “he’s a man and she’s a
woman so he has to handle this bad guy.” (Or open this jar or be smarter or
whatever.) All told, an enjoyable couple
of hours with my baby. The sequel is negotiable.

The Hero (2017)
Any woman past the age of 50 who claims Sam Elliott isn’t on her List™ can’t be
trusted to tell the truth about anything. One of the coolest people alive,
playing what

was billed as the role of a lifetime, how could we not go? Well,
this’ll teach me not to be so hasty in the future. Elliott gets a few good
lines, and his speech at the award ceremony made things worthwhile, but that’s
about it. The move—sorry; I’m sure its auteur
would want it described as a “film”—hints at several plot developments that
would have been more interesting than what he chose, then follows none of them.
The actors do their best, but the end result plays like someone in his 30s or
early 40s who wanted to make a movie about facing one’s mortality without even
having known anyone well who faced it. By the end it just didn’t pass the “So
what?” test.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller
(1971) Not quite sure what to make of this noir Western. There’s

nothing
wrong with it, though the ending is a bit flat. That may be because I expected
a little different movie. Not that I’m sure what
I expected, but the film takes a while to settle into its mood and never does
seem all that comfortable with it. The performances are excellent, and it’s
definitely worth watching for what I expect is as close to an authentic look at
the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the 20th Century as you’re
likely to find. I’ve also come to appreciate it a lot more since the next movie
I saw was

Nevada Smith
(1966) which is exactly the kind of Western I was hoping to stay away from, a
bit of formulaic tripe that is not helped by 35-year-old Steve McQueen playing
what is supposed to be a 16-year-old kid with revenge on his mind. Full of
holes and dubious

A 16-year-old boy?

propositions throughout, and the ending stinks. (Spoiler
alert.) McQueen seriously wounds Karl Malden, the man he’s been chasing the
whole movie. When Malden taunts him to “finish me off,” McQueen’s character
finally takes the words of a priest to heart and spares him, with the parting
words, “You’re not worth killing.” So he leaves the seriously wounded man to die
in a cold stream alone in the mountains. Not that Malden’s character didn’t
deserve it, but that’s what passed for compassion in the 60s. (It also didn’t
help that the movie I was looking for was Tom
Horn but couldn’t remember the title.)

Lots of ways to pre-order Res Mall

Worst Enemies, Book 1 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Grind Joint, Book 2 of the Penns River series

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Forte 4: A Dangerous Lesson Available Now! Click the image below to purchase.

Chicago Private Investigator Nick Forte’s official task is to find out what he can about Jennifer Vandenbusch’s new suitor, who fails to measure up in the eyes of the family matriarch, Jennifer’s grandmother. This seems par for the course for Forte, as his personal life has been leading him through a series of men who treat women badly, though none nearly as badly as the Thursday Night Slasher. Forte lives on the fringes of the investigation run by his old friend Sonny Ng until elements of Forte’s case and life dovetail with the Slasher investigation, leading to Forte discovering more about the crimes—and himself—than he wanted to know.

The Man in the Window

"...we see him getting rougher, tougher and darker book by book. There are multiple twists in the end, two cool sidekicks, good action scenes and some pretty nifty Chanderlisms in this book, adding up to a perfect PI read"--Sons of Spade blog

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of (Nick Forte 2)

It's a kind of authorial magic that The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of works as a tribute and as a story, and that neither aspect interferes in the least with the other… I can imagine this book finding its way into a class on writing crime fiction as an example of how to pay tribute to one's predecessors while at the same time writing a story that can stand on its own. It's an impressive accomplishment.--- Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders, December 18, 2014

About Me

Two of my Nick Forte Private investigator novels (A SMALL SACRIFICE and THE MAN IN THE WINDOW) received nominations for Shamus Awards. I also write a series of police procedurals set in the economically depressed town of Penns River PA, published by Down & Out Books. A non-fiction essay, “Chandler’s Heroes,” appeared in Spinetingler Magazine online in October of 2013.
I live in Laurel MD with The Beloved Spouse.